Why do you need a second wheel, Mum?

A friend of mine, an arts student and craftswoman back in the day, is moving house. Reluctantly, she has decided to part with her pottery and spinning equipment. I asked to buy her 70's Ashford Traditional spinning wheel and all its accessories. My MWAS looked dubious. He has heard horror stories about old spinning wheels that are kept in a loft or an attic for decades. They turn magical and cause hypersomnia or something. Anyway, my friend obligingly brought the wheel round for us to look at.

It looked in pretty good nick, all things considered. I mean, it didn't actually WORK. The wheel was coming apart, there was no drive band, the brake springs were rusted.  But my husband does not own a shed for nothing and he likes a challenge.

The wheel - before we started tinkering with it

It turns out that there is a hollow pin driven through the centre of the wheel attaching it to the shaft. If you can punch that out, then the wheel comes apart. Remove anything that shouldn't be there, upgrade the bearings AT THIS POINT if you want the new sealed type (this occurred to us too late), glue the wheel together and hammer the hollow pin back into place. Note you can't use a nail or other pointy object to hammer a hollow pin in or out, as you will cause the pin to splay and drive it into the wood. You have to use a blunt ended object like an Allen key, which will probably wreck the Allen key. We found this out the hard way.

The drive wheel is coming apart in the middle

While the glue on the wheel was setting, my eight-year-old and I got busy. The wheel came with a jumbo flyer, which I thought would be fun to try out. So he unscrewed the mother-of-all (two little screws underneath it) and replaced it with the mother-of-all that came with the jumbo flyer. This mother-of-all is exactly the same, but the front maiden has a larger bearing to accommodate the wider orifice of the jumbo flyer.

Now to replace the brake band, which now no longer fitted around the circumderence of the jumbo bobbin. Fortunately we had both a pair of Ashford springs and some nylon fishing line to hand, so this was just a matter of cutting a couple of lengths of nylon line, tying the springs to the ends, trimming the line until it was short enough (a sensible person would have measured it first) and then tying the line around the tension knob.

The jumbo flyer with its own maidens and mother of all

I thought the jumbo flyer had only one ratio. Looking closely I see it has two. I'm guessing they are the same as the modern jumbo flyers, about 4.5:1 and 9:1. The regular flyer that came with the wheel has only one ratio, maybe 6:1. So we can get a range of 3 ratios, if we can work out a way to swap between the flyers without having to replace the mother-of-all each time.

Studying the sites of my favourite Ashford dealers, I see there is a Ashford Jumbo Bearing Reducer Bush. Put simply, this is a circular piece of plastic that you can push into your jumbo maiden to reduce its bearing orifice size. Stop sniggering at the back there! I've ordered one and we'll see how it works. I've also ordered a stretchy drive band and a click bearing for the rear maiden, because it drives me crazy to have to twist the rear maiden every time I change bobbin.

My eight-year-old asked if this wheel was for him, so sweetly that I couldn't refuse him. I said it was, and that he could take it to Guild and sit next to me and spin. He already does my plying, and I figure a jumbo bobbin with a 9:1 ratio should be good for plying thicker yarns.

All it would take now, for this wheel to be nearly as good as my 1990 Ashford wheel, is to buy the newest flyer, which I believe has 4 ratios between 6:1 and 18:1. (I would steal the new flyer and put in on MY wheel, putting my 3 ratio flyer on the second wheel). This would cost about £40 I think, so it will have to wait a while. 

This is not the end of my scheming, far from it. What I really covet is an Ashford Elizabeth 2. These beauties are double drive Saxony style wheels, with a 24" drive wheel, which are apparently very good for really fast, fine, even spinning. I can't afford a new one, and second hand ones are hard to find. But the though occurs to me, supposing you bough an Elizabeth drive wheel and fitted it into an Ashford table? Then you would have a (Scotch tension) Elizabeth. To make a double drive Elizabeth you would need to buy the double drive conversion kit - more money, but still possible. I could have an Ashford Tradional set up for Scotch tension and an Elizabeth / Traditional for double tension....

I'll post with pictures when Birdy's wheel is up and running. Fingers crossed that the reglued wheel will spin true....